"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Also arson, armed robbery and extortion. Pretty much everything that’s illegal, I’m against it — fireworks and high-speed driving being the two (usually) victimless crimes of which I’m most fond.

However, nobody’s asked me today about why I hate Nanny State anti-fireworks laws (“Light Fuse, Get Away“), nor have I been asked to debate whether the 55-mph urban freeway speed limit is the first step down the slippery slope to fascism (it is).

Instead, because Tommy Christopher decided to make a big deal of my argument about the Julian Assange rape case with feminist Jill Filipovic — who wouldn’t vote for a Republican if you put a gun to her head — a certain Republican communication strategist decided it’s time to play “Let’s Do a Beatdown on Stacy McCain,” and sent me these questions:

Do you believe that a woman, while asleep – whether from alcohol or rohypnol – is capable of providing consent?

Obviously not. Rohypnol is illegal. Alcohol is legal, but should be used in moderation. Friends don’t let friends get drunk and hook up with strangers.

Do you believe promiscuous women deserve to be raped, rgardless of their chosen partner’s proclivities?

No one “deserves” to be raped, just as no one deserves to be robbed or murdered. If I advise against parking your car in Southeast D.C. with the windows down, the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition, that doesn’t make me “pro-car theft.”

Do you believe that rapists of chaste women deserve a greater punishment, than those of promiscuous backgrounds?

No. Nor do I advocate greater punishment for (a) car thieves who smash the windows of locked cars and hot-wire the ignition, compared to (b) car thieves who opportunistically take advantage of idiots who leave their keys in the ignition.

The way the Grand Inquistor framed that particular question conflates different issues in a troubling way. There is the implicit accusation that I am in favor of something I’ve never advocated (leniency for rapists based on a moral judgment of their victims) so as to set me up either as pro-criminal or else as a moralitic prude who lacks sympathy for The Fallen Woman. But this is not at all the issue that got me arguing with Jill Filipovic over the Assange case, and I don’t like being put in the dock for a cross-examination full of deliberately leading questions.

My point is this: Promiscuity makes women vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and disease. This is not my opinion, but a statement of fact.

As to why this is so, I’ve been pondering an argument that involves selection effects (i.e., what kind of guys go trolling for random hook-ups?) and the law of large numbers (i.e., every additional hook-up increases your odds of experiencing The Tragic Hook-Up From Hell). But that would be a very long and difficult essay to write. Nobody’s offered to pay me for such an article and I don’t have time to write it anyway, because I’ve got to answer yet more accusatory questions from a Republican communications strategist.

Do you recognize a difference between cases where the rapist is unknown to the victim versus date rape?

As noted in a previous post, Assange’s (alleged) victims find themselves in a he-said/she-said situation, after consenting to sex with a guy they barely knew. This is a good example of the inherent risks of consenting to sex with guys you barely know. In a legal system where the burden of proof rests on the prosecution, the difficulty of proving a date-rape accusation is self-evident, as there is unlikely to be any incontrovertible evidence of coercion or force.

So that’s the legal reality, which cannot be wished away, and therefore women should be strongly cautioned against putting themselves into predicaments where they risk being victims of a crime where successful prosecution is so difficult.

are you speaking only to date rape, within a Western country, or does your view extend to victims in developing countries?

If you’re looking for someone to defend the brutality of thugs in Third World pestholes, you need to look elsewhere.

have you written anything, prior to this occurrance, about rape?

Interestingly enough, I wrote a column about a case a few years ago in Floyd County, Ga., where a star athlete was acquitted of raping a girl in a classroom at a high school. That column appeared in the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, but I don’t think it’s available online now. Strange as it may seem, the forces of organized liberalism all sided with the accused rapist in that case, while I argued on behalf of his alleged victim. I don’t know whatever happened to the girl, but the star athlete is now a defensive end for the New York Jets. Maybe he was truly innocent. Or maybe his encounter with the criminal-justice system caused him to straighten up and fly right.

Please point out any particularly important articles authored by you, or your quotes, defending women’s honor.

Let me ask that you talk to Wendy Shalit, author of A Return to Modesty, about the feature article I wrote about her when that book was first published. Ditto the feature articles I’ve written about Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Chesler, Tammy Bruce, etc. Does the name “Pamela Geller” ring a bell? I don’t suppose that any of the articles I’ve written about Sarah Palin (here, here, here, just for example) would meet your “particularly important” standard, since you obviously never read The American Spectator.

Are you aware of the sex trafficking and rape statistics within the US?

I could Google it. Are you blaming me personally for these statistics, or is this question just another non sequitur?

Have you done any mission, or other aid work in developing countries where sex trafficking & rape are pandemic?

Ma’am, I’m a journalist, trying to eke out a living on the Internet, and have neither the time nor money to engage in save-the-world crusades. But now that you mention it, I’ve been to Africa with a Christian missionary who carries an AK-47 and rescues victims of terrorism. So I’m familiar with the atrocities perpetrated by thugs in Third World pestholes, if that’s your question.

The Grand Inquistor’s point, of course, is that I am her moral inferior and that she is therefore entitled to interrogate me to prove her point.

None of this is going to mean a damn thing to the prosecution of Julian Assange, nor is it going to help any rape victim — not here in America, not in Sweden, not in “developing countries.” But doing a beatdown on the Designated Scapegoat makes people feel good about themselves, which I guess is far more important for them than anything else I might have done with the time it took to answer these questions.